Ellen Porter
10/11/07
Against the Banana Tree

An old toothless man
sits on the ground
resting his back against
a banana tree.
He clings to one foot
with both hands
trying to suck his big toe.

I say to Hafiz
there is so much to be done
to facilitate the meeting of
the soul and the Beloved.
How can he sit there
trying to suck his toe?
It’s a disgrace.

Hafiz laughs and answers
By watching the man and judging
what are you doing to ensure
a meeting with the Beloved?

With that, Hafiz sits down
beside the toothless old man
and tries to suck his big toe.
He looks at me and grins.
He opens his mouth large
as a carved pumpkin
and shouts

LIGHTEN UP!


Ellen Porter
12/14/07
Deception

Poems have blossomed
in response to the great poets:
Rumi, Ryoken, Hafiz.
But these words are imitation:
a sparrow singing
to sound like a red-winged blackbird.

Sometimes a close likeness,
but the song is never true.
The love I pen is not honest
for friends or the homeless or the birds.
I change day to day in my illness
and refuse visitors.
Save one or two, I would
rather be alone.

Perhaps it is the greatest sin of all
to pretend to be a lover of souls
when in fact my heart grows dark and weary.


Ellen Porter
11/19/07
Hospice

I step into hospice,
and after twenty years
give up the tedious, painful, ignominious fight.

I float here, memorizing my days
my numbered, peaceful moments of pure joy.

There is no shame here, strangling my spirit
like kudzu in Southern trees.
Only resignation, a grateful relaxation
of body, a jelly fish washed to shore,
waiting to breathe, with the next wave,
its burden of water.

I do not hurry toward death
but like an alley cat
I peek around the corner
curiosity rustling my mind.


Ellen Porter
5/25/07
Morning Song
(after Mary Oliver)

I rise late this morning
and go to my chair,
dawn unfolding like a lazy flower.
The daily bird is halfway
through her song,
calling, calling other birds,
the stray raccoon, the city cats, the rhymer.
I breathe deeply,
hoping to catch the bit
of dawn I missed.
Somewhere in the
intermittent light
the elusive poet
lingers.


Ellen Porter
10/13/07
respiration

my lung
heaped with ashes
radiation burned
yet i breathe
with dignity
i breathe

my lung
air polished
and spit out again
i breathe
a jar of oxygen
i breathe

my lung
and the blackness
of my lung
repudiates normalcy
damns intimacy
to sugared fluff
but yet
i breathe
and again
and again
i breathe


Ellen Porter
12/01/07
the house boat

the house boat
nearly abandoned by sunrise
hugs the dock, shackled with rope and chain.
on the tether post, high enough to meet the river-tide’s demands,
a flowering egret waits stone still
spying through water for silvery fins:
early morning breakfast.
if there is a tenant there,
skipper of the house on logs,
a blond and freckled man, perhaps,
he might know more than any other
the egret’s stare,
the whole world floating and echoing on water.


Ellen Porter
11/11/07
To Mary Oliver

She says she is
less useful than a tare
or a sparrow

she who sustains
the words flowing
from my spirit to paper.

If I could meet her
at the tide pool edge
of the sea

I would tell her
the magnitude of her gift,
this poet,
and she would not believe.